Outtakes: The One AM Radio

There's almost always more good stuff in an interview than we've got room for in the paper. Thus, an occasional feature on this blog: Outtakes, where I'll post some quotes from interviews that didn't make it into print.

To kick this off, some parts of my recent conversation with Hrishikesh Hirway, a.k.a. the One AM Radio. I wrote about him for today's A&E in advance of his show on Sunday at Towne Lounge, but here's a bit more:

Q: How did you decide to go for a fuller sound on the new album?

A: That part of it was definitely a conscious decision. Some stuff ends up being dictated by chance, some ends up inadvertently coming out some way entirely different from your intentions. As far as that part went, I definitely knew from the beginning that I wanted to try and make a record that sounded big, that sounded really deep and epic.

Q: Your sound incorporates a lot of both acoustic and electronic elements. How did that happen?

A: I think that was just the result of me trying to marry all the disparate ideas that I'm influenced by in music and trying to incorporate a little bit of everything that I love.

Q: You started out playing the drums, did it change your perspective on music to come at it from a rhythm point of view?

A: That I think is either the reason why or part of the same reason why I think I've always been drawn to hip hop and electronic beats, because the drums, that's sort of the thing I listen to first.

Q: What's your songwriting process?

A: It's never really the same. There's not like an established process. Sometimes I'll have a story in mind or a part of a story... It'll be like a scene or an image and I'll try to flesh that out. Sometimes I'll have music already in mind for it. Sometimes I'll have music that I've been working on first... Sometimes I'll have an idea for an instrumental harmony that I'll want to do and then the song comes from that.